News-Record.com

Back last summer, I wrote this story on the budget, the one that now has a big ol' gap in it that Bev Perdue is trying to fix.

Rep. John Blust wrote to ask me about it the other day, because he was trying to remember the quote he gave me at the time:

Rep. John Blust, a Greensboro Republican pointed to a line in the budget document that estimates how much revenue the state would earn next year.

"Those that vote yes on this budget in just a few minutes are making a big bet that that number is going to hold up," Blust said.

As he points out, that number didn't hold up.

Sen. Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, also had a salient quote at the time:

Opponents, mainly Republicans, say there's increasing evidence that the slowing economy will mean less revenue to spend than budget writers expect.

"What we're doing is setting ourselves up, or rather we're setting up next year's legislature for a serious problem," said Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican and the Senate minority leader. He likened the pending budget to one passed in 2000 that plunged the state into deficit just as Easley took office.

"Those memories are still pretty vivid to me," Berger said.

Now there is an argument to be made that Republicans criticize the budget every year. And, frankly, you'd be correct. In the four years I've been covering the GA full time (and the few years before that of pitching in the occasional story) lots of folks in the GOP express skepticism about the budget - particularly Blust and Berger.

But whether this is a case of the blind squirrel finding the not or not, it does seem they were spot on this time.